


I’ll write my name on your sole

by Morning66



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26351569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morning66/pseuds/Morning66
Summary: Richie sticks his tongue out at Eddie and flashes his foot forward, the side of his shoe where he’s written fuck you in all capitals. Eddie checks the front of the room, sees Mrs. Johnson’s still finishing up writing the quadratic formula, and then flips Richie off.From the desk beside him, Eddie hears Stan sigh, deep and miserable.(Or, Richie writes his name on Eddie’s shoes and Eddie is not having it.)
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 10
Kudos: 115





	I’ll write my name on your sole

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!!! Just a little thing!! Doesn’t really line up with canon after the first movie. Hope you like it! =D
> 
> Warnings: swearing and sexual references (basically, your mom jokes :D)

It’s an unsaid, but understood truth among the Losers that Richie never stops moving.

Not during class when he spins his pencil and fidgets with pink erasers and draws lewd stick figures on scraps of paper which he passes to the nearest Loser, not when they’re hanging out in the clubhouse, wrestling and nearly jumping off the walls, not even when he’s sleeping, Eddie knows all to well from all the times Richie’s kicked him during sleepovers.

No, Richie never stops moving, talking, laughing, joking. It’s a rule of the universe, the way the Earth orbits the sun and balls fall back to the ground when you throw them up as long as they don’t get stuck in a tree. They’re used to it, the way he is, and they love him for it.

(Undiagnosed ADHD, Stan had whispered once under his breath, a mumble that wasn’t supposed to be heard by anyone and Eddie had looked it up in the giant medical dictionary his mother kept in her room once when she was at the grocery store.

Oh, he’d thought, oh and he’d never said another word about it.)

When they’re fifteen, Richie starts drawing on his shoes in class with black sharpie, drawing faces and writing words, bad ones like fuck and shit right on the previously white soles. Eddie watches him and shakes his head, thinking about what his mom would say if she saw that. She’d probably have a cow and then a pig and then maybe even a horse.

Richie sticks his tongue out at Eddie and flashes his foot forward, the side of his shoe where he’s written fuck you in all capitals. Eddie checks the front of the room, sees Mrs. Johnson’s still finishing up writing the quadratic formula, and then flips Richie off.

From the desk beside him, Eddie hears Stan sigh, deep and miserable.

Mrs. Johnson, who must have a sixth sense for bullshit, happens to turn around at that very moment. Her face turns tomato red at Eddie’s gesture and Eddie has a moment of panic only surpassed by the time his mom caught him sneaking out to go to a midnight movie premiere with his friends.

“Edward Kaspbrak!” Her voice is loud and horrified.

Richie bursts out laughing and she turns on him too, purple starting to mix with the red of her face.

Stan puts his face in his hands, shaking his head slowly.

*****

“It was all you fucking fault, asshole!” Eddie tells Richie as they sit in the bed of Mike’s pickup that night. 

It’s Friday and the stars are overhead and they’re driving just to get away, driving just to get outside of the Derry city limits, even if it’s just for a few hours. It’s something they started doing when Mike, the oldest of them by a month, finally got his license and convinced his grandfather to let him borrow the car.

“It’s my fault that you gave me the finger during class? Wow, Eds, I guess I’ll add mind control to my list of prowesses.” Richie winks at Eddie on the last word and wiggles his eyebrows, putting unwanted stress on it.

“You’re the one who started it! You’re the one who’s writing on your stupid shoes that your mom probably paid forty whole dollars for.”

Richie sticks out his tongue. “You just don’t know art! My shoes are obviously a masterpiece. Your mom would think so.”

“They look fucking stupid,” Eddie says, mashing his teeth together. “Even my mom would think so.”

Richie shoots him a grin. “I’m appalled, Eduardo, that you don’t like them!”

His accent, Eddie thinks, is probably trying to be Mexican or Brazilian or Spanish, but comes out mangled beyond recognition.

“Maybe I’ll do yours for you! We could match then,” Richie says brightly, back to his normal rural Maine accent.

“When Hell freezes over!”

Richie lifts up his foot with the aforementioned shoe, waves it in Eddie’s face, and then Mike’s going over a pothole that must have come from last winter’s freezing and thawing and Richie’s foot is hitting Eddie in the lips.

“You got dirt in my mouth, dickwad!” Eddie screams and pushes Richie away, but there’s nowhere for him to go because the truck is one of the small ones they used to make twenty years ago. He half considers pushing him out the back, but doesn’t because while that would serve Richie right, Eddie would have to be the one cleaning up the mess, getting Richie’s dirty blood on his hands and arms.

“Can you k-k-keep it down back there?” Bill yells, sticking his head out the passenger window, dark hair blowing back from his head in the breeze, looking a bit like a movie star or someone on the B rate soaps Eddie’s mom makes him watch sometimes.

“That’s what I asked Eddie’s mom last night!” Richie bellows back and for once Eddie is grateful that Derry is in the middle of nowhere, for the empty fields that surround the town, the miles and miles of nothing and no one.

“She’s going to ground me when she hears,” Eddie says darkly.

He’d gotten lucky. Mrs. Johnson had sent both him and Richie to the principle’s office, where they’d sat for thirty minutes on a hardwood bench, waiting and poking each other. Finally, the secretary, a tired looking woman who looked like she had a bad case of spending her whole life in Derry, Maine, had dismissed them, saying that the bell was going to ring any minute and they could come back first thing Monday morning.

“They won’t remember,” Richie says. “Somebody else will have done something by then. And anyway, what’s it matter because half the time you sneak out anyway, Spaghetti?”

“That doesn’t mean I want to be in trouble, dumbass.”

“I’d want to be in trouble with your mom,” Richie says, making his normal voice deep and husky.

Eddie reconsiders his reluctance to push Richie off the back of the truck.

****

Eddie’s known Richie almost all his life so he should know that there are some things that his friend won’t let die. There are other things, like their math homework and watering the flowers for his mom, that Richie forgets nearly the minute they’re brought up. Unfortunately for Eddie, the shoe thing is the former and not the latter.

That Sunday, Eddie’s watch wakes him up at six on the dot, with a quiet beeping sound. He opens his eyes blearily, pushing away Richie’s bony elbow that had been wedged hard against his stomach. His cheek hurts and he’d bet all his savings there’s a bright red mark because he accidentally spent the night using one of Ben’s history books as a pillow. 

Quietly, as to not wake the other boys, Eddie stuffs his feet in his sneakers and ties them (because unlike some people he doesn’t just slip them on and off like that and break the back and probably the sole too). He grabs his bag and heads for the door, pausing on the way out to look in at the other boys, still sleeping and looking remarkably young.

If Eddie had his choice, he’d sleep in like the other boys and wake up at ten and eat the chocolate chip pancakes Ben’s mom makes that he’s only ever heard about. He doesn’t, though, because his mom will be up by seven-thirty at the latest and God knows she’d probably give them both an aneurism if she found out he’d stayed out all night long.

He gets home just in time to climb into bed so that his mother can come in and wake him up, already dressed in her Sunday best.

Eddie doesn’t look at his sneakers for the rest of the day because he wears brown loafers to church. Brown loafers and tan pants and a button up the front shirt his mother says makes him look just darling. He sits through service and Sunday School boredly, wishing that one of his friends went here with him.

It would be fun if Richie were here, Eddie thinks, as the Sunday School teacher goes through a lesson that’s boring even to the five year old next to him. Of course he’s not, because Richie’s Catholic if he’s anything and most Sundays his parents don’t give a shit if he goes to mass or not, the lucky duck.

Monday’s already off to a bad start because Eddie wakes up ten minutes late, drenched in sweat, images of clowns and lepers still playing across his mind. It gets worse in homeroom when Richie opens his big fat mouth.

Eddie comes in just as the bell rings, still wiping sleep out of his eyes as his homeroom teacher shoots him a glare. He takes his seat in the second row and returns Ben’s friendly smile tiredly.

Eddie’s slipping out his French notebook to review conjugations for the quiz today when Richie turns around in his seat, grin wide. 

“Hey, Eds! I like your shoes!”

“I told you not to call—“ Eddie starts to say, a reflex to the unwanted nickname and then he processes the rest of the sentence.

Shoes. 

Eddie nearly gives himself whiplash with how fast he glances down. There’s his shoes, nothing out of the ordinary there. Grey and red tennis shoes with white laces, kept in pretty good shape from an abundance of effort.

“There’s nothing wrong with my shoes, Richie. They’re just shoes.”

Eddie should know what’s coming, but he doesn’t.

Richie’s grin grows almost impossibly wider. He turns around fully and rests his crossed arms on Eddie’s desk, long skinny fingers running down the pencil slit. “I like the soles, Eds.”

Eddie’s heart is beating and he knows in that moment what Richie did. He still has to check, still has to see how embarrassing Richie’s made the bottom of his shoe, but he knows. Eddie pulls his left foot up so it’s resting across his knee and peaks down.

RICHIE is written across the sole in big black letters and Richie’s messy, all uppercase handwriting.

“Oh my God, you asshole!” Eddie hisses, keeping his voice quiet at the end because he doesn’t want a repeat of last Friday.

“Eddie, Richie, be quiet back there and stand up, we’re about to say the pledge,” His teacher calls out, easy tone letting Eddie know she didn’t hear the insults.

Richie gives Eddie one last megawatt grin before turning toward the flag.

****

Eddie storms into lunch with the energy and appearance of angry naked mole rat in a polo and short shorts.

“You’re literally the most annoying person on the fucking planet, you realize that, Richie? In the galaxy! In the universe!” he says as he takes a seat at the Loser’s usual lunch table. Since it’s spring now they can eat outside under the old oak tree.

Richie, who had previously been stuffing his face with about twenty five French fries at once, gulps down his food. “Aw, Eddie, you’re so cute when you act smart. Maybe you should go join NASA.”

“Fuck NASA!” Eddie nearly yells. 

“Hey, NASA’s pretty cool,” Ben starts, but his voice is drowned out by Richie’s.

“Wow, Eds, that’s a lotta fucking, man. Better get on it soon.” He adds a wink at the end.

“Don’t call me that!” Eddie yells and he knows he’s making a ruckus, but he’s just mad, okay?

“You know you love it!” Richie taunts, a glint in his eye that Eddie doesn’t recognize.

And that hurts like a sucker punch to the gut because it’s the truth. That’s the way it always is, lies can sting and burn, but it’s the truth that can utterly destroy you.

“I fucking hate it!” Eddie slaps a hand down on the dirty wood of the picnic table. “I hate all of it! The stupid nickname and all the jokes and my fucking shoes, which are ruined now!”

Eddie says it and the there’s silence. The wind whistles, the birds chirp, a dog barks somewhere far off. Richie’s mouth hangs open widely and from his eyes Eddie can tell that he hurt him, that he shocked something in him.

Good, a tiny part of him thinks and he simultaneously wants that part to be the entirety of him and not to exist at all.

“Guys, c-c-c’mon,” Bill starts, holding out an arm towards them, hand grasped around the stick of the greasy corn dog the school’s serving today. “Can’t you—“

He doesn’t finish his sentence because Richie is standing up. “Fuck you, Eddie. Fuck you. I’m out of here.”

Richie throws out his mostly uneaten lunch in the nearest trash can and heads for the school. They watch him leave, an uncomfortable hush settling over them. Bill’s corn dog, still pointed somewhere in the space between where Richie was and Eddie is, slips off the stick and lands with a slap against the picnic table, covering up the initials of some long ago couple.

“Gosh, Eddie,” Ben says and it hangs in the air.

Eddie’s pretty sure he hates himself.

****

Eddie spends the first half of gym class standing in the locker room in his socks (which he’s going to have to throw away the minute he gets home because do you know how many fucking germs are probably on the floor of the boys’ locker room?), attempting to scrub off his shoes with soap and paper towels to no avail. The bold black letters of his friend’s name are still on both soles.

Maybe it would’ve worked if they had a different kind of soap, Eddie thinks. The school buys the cheap kind, the kind that they can buy in bulk for a low price because no one else wants it. Eddie knows this because his mom has complained about it at PTA meetings multiple times in the last year.

(“That stuff doesn’t work, don’t you hear me? My poor boy Eddie is very very sick, chronically ill you see, and the soap’s just causing more germs to spread and put him at risk!”)

But they don’t and it doesn’t and after twenty five minutes of scrubbing and nothing to show for it, Eddie heavily takes a seat on the wooden bench and sighs. There’s still thirty minutes left and Eddie guesses he could go out and sit by the gym teacher, an overweight, graying man who helps coach the football team and generally looks at him with contempt and disgust.

It’s not his fault, Eddie wants to tell him, not his fault that his mom called up the principal on the first day of the year and informed him that her son was too ill to do gym, that physical exertion would probably kill him. He doubts it would matter though. His teacher already worked it through his mind that Eddie’s a sissy through and through and he’s the type of person that there’s no changing once they’ve made up their mind.

On second thought, there’s a lot of those type of people in Derry.

Eddie’s sitting there, bent over a bit, head in his hands, when Stan comes in. Stan, wearing a t-shirt and shorts and blood all over his face. 

“Got hit in the face with a dodgeball,” Stan says and that’s all it takes for Eddie to jump up and into action. 

“Sit down,” he orders, taking up the mantle of Dr. K easily. He grabs paper towels from the dispenser by the sinks and wets one a little. “Wipe your face, then hold the dry ones to your nose. And tilt your head back.”

Stan does what Eddie said and Eddie leans against the cold, steel lockers, watching. 

Stan holds for two minutes, then pulls off the paper towels. “It stopped,” he says and gets up and throws them in the trash.

Eddie gets up in his face. “It’s not broken,” he says. “It’d be crooked if it was broken.”

Stan nods. “Thanks, Eddie.”

“You going back to gym?” Eddie asks, taking back his seat on the bench.

Stan shakes his head and gives Eddie a little bit of a smile. “I’m done with that for today.”

“I bet,” Eddie says and returns the smile.

Sometimes, Eddie’s surprised at how simple everything is with the other Losers. Stan was Richie’s friend first, back when they were little kids, and then they all became friends. He and Eddie aren’t particularly close, but they can joke and smile, easy as pie.

Eddie and Richie aren’t like that. Eddie and Richie are like a bomb, like something explosively dangerous and impossibly fun. It’s easy with Richie, too, of course— easy to spiral down and down and down into some place he’s not sure he was ever meant to be. It’s fun, sure, but never simple.

Stan opens his locker and pulls out his button up shirt and starts changing. “Why’ve you been in here the whole time?”

Eddie looks down at his feet, still only in socks. The marred shoes lie in a sad heap by him.

Stan looks at him and sighs, halfway through buttoning his shirt. “Eddie—“

“Hey, if you’re going to defend him, he ruined my good pair of shoes!” Eddie protests, maybe a bit too loud because it echoes in the empty locker room.

Stan sighs. “I’m not going to defend him, it’s just...” Stan finishes buttoning his shirt and reaches a hand up to rub his nose. “He doesn’t think about consequences, even though there’s a million for him to think of.”

“I know,” Eddie says. “It’s just it’s always me, you’ve got to know that. It’s never you, or Bill, or Ben, or Mike, or anyone.”

Stan takes a seat next to Eddie and threads his fingers together. “Look, Eddie, Richie, he’s got stuff going on and he doesn’t know how to deal with it, so he acts, but most of the time he doesn’t act right, you know?” Stan pauses and his voice lowers. “Like that damn bridge.”

“What bridge?” Eddie asks, because non sequitur much?

“Nothing, it just...Just ask him, okay? Because it means something, it all does.”

“What—“ Eddie starts to ask when the door bursts open once more.

“You okay, Stan?” Ben asks, plodding in, face red and sweaty. “I was worried about your nose.”

“Yeah, I’m good. Thanks, Ben.” Stan calls back, getting up and leaving Eddie completely and utterly confused.

****

By the end of the day, Eddie feels horrible. It brews in him during his last two periods, gathering strength deep in his abdomen. Five years ago this would send him into a spiral of anxiety over late season colds, but he’s at least self aware enough now to know that the way his stomach is in knots has nothing to do with any physical ailments.

Eddie stands at his locker after school for a long time deliberating whether to go home. It’s a Monday and Stan and Ben have Science Club and Mike’s probably helping his grandfather on the farm and Eddie’s pretty sure Bill’s got a study date at the library with Sarah James, a pretty girl in their class. (The fact that her hair is red and curly and short and that she’s got a great smile doesn’t escape any of the Losers, but they’re too nice to point it out.) That leaves Richie and Eddie.

Richie and Eddie.

Eddie should probably go home, let things cool between the two of them. Get an early start on his History project that already looks like too much work.

He should, but for some reason he bikes to the clubhouse instead of his home.

Two weeks ago they’d opened the clubhouse up for the year, having been forced out by the onset of cold weather last November. When they opened up the place it had taken an entire weekend to clean it, pulling out twigs and dead leaves, drying out rugs still sopping from snow melt. They’d accidentally left chips and candy bars in a bin and some animal must have found them, leaving only wrappers licked clean. “Gross!” Eddie had cried and Richie had tossed the wrappers which were probably covered in raccoon drool at him.

Eddie parks his bike in the tall grass and takes a deep breath. Richie might not even be down there, but he feels like he is, somewhere deep in his gut. 

Oh, God, he thinks, and heads down.

Richie is there, sprawled out in the hammock, comic book lying flat across his stomach, staring up at the ceiling. It’s a very un-Richielike pose.

When he sees Eddie coming down, Richie looks up at him, face hard to read, lips curved downward, eyes sad or scared or lonely or something. “Eddie—“ Richie starts and Eddie hates how his voice sounds, well, defeated.

“How long have you been here?” Eddie spits out.

It’s not what Richie’s expecting. “Uh—fifteen minutes. Shit, Eddie, I dunno.”

“Then your fucking ten minutes are up, you fucking dickwad.”

Richie blinks at him. A smile starts to grow on his face, lips starting to tug upward. “Oh yeah? Who’s gonna make me? Not you, little Eddie Spaghetti.”

Eddie means to hop on Richie, push him out of the hammock, that’s what he always tells himself every time, but Richie’s already shoving over leaving a sliver of hammock open, just enough for a skinny teenage boy. It swings when he gets in, back and forth, back and forth, and Eddie’s side is flush with Richie’s from their ankles to their ears.

(They used to go on opposing ends, Eddie’s feet bumping up against Richie’s nose and vice versa. Sometime last summer they stopped that, started going the same way. 

“I can’t stand your feet near my face,” Eddie had said. “Just the stench makes me want to fucking puke and that’s not even getting into the germs.”

“You wound me, Eds! You know your mother loves my feet!” Cue Richie Tozier patented sexual wink here.)

“What’s that?” Eddie asks, reaching for the comic, hand going a little off-center so that his palm lands against Richie’s ribs.

“New Swampman,” Richie says. “Here, the ending’s so stupid.”

Richie opens it up to the last page. Eddie doesn’t say that that’s not how he likes to read comics, that he’s not like Richie who likes to start at random places, jumping around to whatever catches his eye. He doesn’t say that he likes to start on page one and read straight through to the end, all in order, all in one sitting.

Eddie doesn’t care about the comic right now.

“So it’s stupid, ya know? Like why the fuck is Swampman fucking using a fucking laser gun, right? He could just use his swamp powers and shit.”

“Richie,” Eddie says to get his attention and then Richie’s looking at him, all big, wide eyes.

“I’m. I mean,” Eddie starts, trying to spit out the words. “I’m sorry, for lunch I mean.”

He sounds like an idiot, he thinks. A fucking idiot.

Richie’s not looking at him like he’s an idiot, though. Richie’s looking at him like he’s giving him all the answers to all their math tests for the rest of high school.

“S’okay, Eds. I know I’m annoying as fuck. I’m not that stupid.”

Eddie shakes his head. Richie’s not stupid at all, he thinks. “I-I like how you are,” he says, soft even though they’re the only ones who can hear.

It’s true. Sure, Richie’s annoying, but most of the time Eddie likes being annoyed by him, as paradoxical as that is. Likes the way they can bicker and fight and swear and then go back to being best friends the next minute.

Something lights up in Richie’s eyes. Something bright, something on fire. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, Rich,” Eddie says and means it, means more than just that too even if he doesn’t really know it.

Richie looks away for a minute, up at the ceiling. Then, he starts squirming, legs moving against each other. At first, Eddie thinks he’s just trying to get out some extra energy, but then he realizes with a start that Richie’s using one foot to slip off the shoe on another.

Once the shoe’s half off, he kicks it up in the air. The hammock swings and Richie’s dirty sneaker arches toward them. Richie catches his shoe right before it hits Eddie in the nose.

“Jesus, Richie—“ Eddie starts, but Richie cuts him off.

“Eds,” Richie says and turns the shoe so Eddie can see the sole. “Look.”

Richie’s voice is scared, Eddie thinks. Scared and shaking a little.

EDDIE, is scrawled across Richie’s shoe in his big, blocky handwriting.

EDDIE.

Richie throws the shoe back down by his feet. He looks at Eddie, eyes wide and young and old and he’s asking a question that neither of them can put into words.

Eddie knows the answer, though.

He surges forward and mashes their lips together, a little too hard, a little rough, but with enough enthusiasm that it makes up for any lack of finesse. Richie responds just as enthusiastically, the hammock rocking slightly as they lock lips.

They kiss with all the skill of fish trying to breathe without water, with all the skill of teenagers who’ve never done more then look, despite what they claim to their friends. It’s not good, but they’ve never done this before, so it feels magnificent, tingly and warm and exhilarating.

When they pull back, Richie grins at Eddie, bright and happy and so Richie that Eddie has to grin back even knowing that his expression is embarrassingly fond. Then, they lean forward again, meeting in the middle.

At some point, the comic falls onto the floor, lying down on the packed dirt floor. At some point, they kick their shoes off and they fall to the floor, lying in a heap.

Richie and Eddie, Eddie and Richie, tangled together.

****

(Eddie finds his shoes again twenty some years later, back in Derry even though he swore at nineteen never to go back. His mother is dead, though, and someone needs to clean out the house. He’s not sure how he feels about that, the fact that Sonia Kaspbrak is buried under Derry dirt, final breaths taken hissing and wheezing from pneumonia. It’s ironic, he thinks, and he’s working through it.

His room is left untouched, as if his mother was always waiting for him to come back, sick and hurt and her little boy again. It simultaneously creeps him out and comforts him that all his stuff is still here, covered in a thin layer of dust that doesn’t hurt him because he doesn’t have fucking asthma.

He’s looking under the bed, pulling out a box of decades old comics that might actually sell for something, when he finds the tennis shoes. 

Oh, he thinks and flips them over, smiling at the soles.

Even after all these years, RICHIE is still visible on the bottom, a little more faded, maybe, but still undeniable.

Eddie loves it. He loved it when he was fifteen too, but it was a different kind of love then, a love tinged with fear, because it was hard being a boy in love with a boy in Derry in the nineties.

Now, though, he loves it plainly, simply.

“Hey Eds, I found some used condoms from the last time I fucked your mom back in high school,” Richie declares, striding in the room, still loud and crude and hilarious even though he’s pushing forty.

“Fuck you, man,” Eddie says, but it holds no venom. “Hey, remember these?”

He holds up the shoes.

From his widened eyes, Richie does. “Jesus, Eds,” he breathes, reaching out to touch them. “I was such a little shit then.”

“You’re a little shit now,” Eddie says, putting the shoes down on his bed.

“Pot calling the—“

Eddie shrugs him up with a kiss, a kiss that has been refined over the years, made even more beautiful with practice. 

Eddie drives out of Derry wearing his old shoes. He doesn’t look back.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!!!!! :)


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